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8/15/2021 2 Comments

Film- The Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges

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Both the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges are two of my favorite comedy teams and two of the best of all time. While both groups share similarities, they also feature enough contrasts to not make them direct competitors.

The Three Stooges

The Three Stooges began performing in vaudeville acts in the 1920s with comedian Ted Healy. They were then known as “Ted Healy and His Stooges”. In the 1930s, the Three Stooges split from Healy and starred in their own short movies. From 1934-1946, the Three Stooges consisted of brothers Moe and Curly Howard and friend Larry Fine. Curly suffered a stroke in the late 1940s and brother Shemp Howard took his place from 1946-1955 until his death. Joe Besser took Shemp’s place for more short movies from 1956-1958. The last Stooge addition was Curly Joe DeRita from 1958-1970.
The Three Stooges reached new popularity once their short movies started showing on TV. This led to renewed interest from older fans and new attention from younger viewers that experienced their comedy for the first time. This new popularity led to them producing several full length feature films from 1959-1965. The Three Stooges continued to perform live until Larry Fine suffered a stroke in the early 1970s.

Moe Howard, the last surviving original Stooge, passed in 1975. Curly Joe DeRita was the last surviving replacement Stooge, when he passed in 1993.
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The Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers started as a vaudeville act as well. All of the Marx Brothers were actually brothers. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo Marx are the best known brothers, but Zeppo and Gummo  performed with them at first. Gummo never appeared in any of their films. Zeppo was in their first five films, usually as a straight man. Both Zeppo and Gummo became successful organizing the business responsibilities for the family. Eventually, the Marx Brothers transitioned from the vaudeville stage to the Broadway stage.

The Marx Brothers first feature length films were adaptations of their Broadway shows. From 1929-1933, the Brothers appeared in five feature films at Paramount with the focus on the Brothers themselves and their distinct characters. Often the gags would take precedence over the narrative.
In 1935, the Brothers were signed to MGM studios and appeared in 8 additional films from 1935-1949. The focus of these films were much more on a tighter narrative, musical interludes, and romantic subplots that most often did not involve the Brothers.
After the popularity of their movies started to wane, Groucho, Harpo, and Chico transitioned to television appearances, with Groucho finding the most success hosting shows like “You Bet Your Life”.

Chico passed in 1961 and Harpo in 1964. Groucho and Gummo passed in 1977. Zeppo was the last surviving Marx Brother when he passed in 1979.
Actress Margaret Dumont was often considered an unofficial Marx Brother. She appeared as the straight woman in 7 of their movies from 1929-1939, most often opposite Groucho. She played the dignified wealthy widow that would look down upon Groucho’s antics. 
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Similarities and Differences

Both the Three Stooges and Marx Brothers were Jewish families that grew up in New York City. Both used the medium of motion pictures to reach their widest audience. Both used a combination of verbal and physical humor. Both groups also used the idea of a team with contrasting characters to their advantage.
The Three Stooges were always involved in situations together. Moe is almost always the de facto leader of the group. However it is important to note that although he confidently tries to explain things to the other Stooges, he is often just as lost as they are. Larry is often the quietest in the group, preferring to hang back with a puzzled look on his face. He is also the most physically distinctive of the group with his hair looking like a clown’s.

Curly was often the most vulnerable, or easily mislead member of the group. He always featured the physical trait of a single button done on his jacket, giving the impression that the jacket was about to pop open. Shemp’s physical characteristic was his hair combed back that would constantly fall in front of his face. No disrespect, but I always found Joe Besser to be kind of whiny. I do not remember many of his movies. Curly Joe DeRita was mostly an imitation of Curly, which I think was the intention all along.
As for the Marx Brothers, Zeppo Marx often played the straight man which contrasted with his brothers. Groucho Marx often played the lead in their movies. His distinctive walk, painted on mustache, glasses, and cigar have become popular with glasses imitating him still available at costume stores. His greatest strength was the speed of his verbal banter. He would acknowledge his brothers but was often featured in scenes apart from them.
Chico and Harpo had many scenes together both sharing their musical as well as their comedic talents. Chico followed the recent immigrant stereotype. He believed himself to have good business sense but the language barrier would often get him mixed up. Harpo was the always silent brother, relying on his physical comedy. Like Larry from the Three Stooges, Harpo’s curly blond wig makes him look the most like a clown.
Both groups seem to use class identity to better identify with their audiences. In many situations the Three Stooges and Marx Brothers portray lower to middle class characters contrasted in an upper class world. Whereas the Three Stooges seem to have a goal of assimilating and wanting to fit in and always failing, the Marx Brothers seem to celebrate that they are at the limits of society.
Today, the Marx Brothers seem to get more recognition from critics and scholars than the Three Stooges. Feature films have always been recognized over short films, especially in the genre of comedy. However, more viewers today seem to know the Three Stooges. I believe this may be how friendly the short movie format is to television.
As I said before, I love the work of both groups and I think their styles complement each other well. No one has to choose between them. Why not enjoy both?
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7/5/2021 0 Comments

Film- The Origins of Film Comedy: The 20th Century

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Vaudeville and the British Music Hall

(United States: ~1880-1930; United Kingdom: ~1850-1960)

The style of performance known as Vaudeville began to appear just a few years before the invention of the motion picture. The term “vaudeville” comes from the song parodies of Eighteenth Century France.  Vaudeville focused not on a narrative or order of events, but rather on the performer herself.  There was no director of the performances, aside from the owner of the venue that would choose the order of acts and determine which performer received the best audience response.  This absence of a director left the performer as the controller of timing, audience rapport, and content.   Later in the Twentieth Century, the Vaudeville tradition continued in the form of stand-up comedy.

Vaudeville, and the British equivalent of the Music Hall, had more influence on the style of comedy film than on any other genre. The episodic style of Vaudeville introduced a performance rhythm that became expected in film comedy and ultimately led to television variety shows.

With its widespread influence, the style of Vaudeville and Music Hall affected many later filmmakers and theorists, including the great Russian filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein, who wrote more about the art of montage than any other filmmaker or film scholar.  He credits the inspiration of creating meaning through the juxtaposition of separate elements to Vaudeville and the Music Hall. The rapid-fire delivery of antecedent-consequence, set up-punch line style of comedy that audiences come to expect with film comedy has its roots in Vaudeville.

Another innovation that came from within the context of Vaudeville is the duality of the comedienne as a character and the comedienne as herself. By the 1930s, it was not uncommon to find examples of comedians, like the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, or (for that matter) Cary Grant, who appeared in films impersonating themselves instead of a fictional character.

Of course, studios at the time could not help but encourage this trend.  If a comedienne, or more importantly, if her style, were popular with audiences, succeeding pictures featuring this comedienne were more likely to be successful, as audiences members knew what to expect from the comedienne’s performance.  Vaudeville also presented the mindset that a successful comic performance should be judged not on the creativity of the performer or the variety of his or her performances, but on the number of laughs that the performer elicits.

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The Motion Picture

(Beginning: ~1895)

Since the birth of the motion picture in the late 1800s, film comedy not only developed due to the influence of other art forms, but also within the film medium as the techniques and styles of filmmaking became conventions of expression.  It is important here to note that the film genres that we know today did not appear fully formed, but rather developed gradually over a period of a couple decades.

The major genres of the infant years of film were melodrama, comedy, and historical epic.  Comedy was successful critically, as well as financially. In the 1920s, film reviewers and audiences saw the comic Chaplin as at an equal level as that of the dashing Fairbanks. There was no difference between the comic performer and the dramatic performer.  

Some of the most influential comic characters and situations that are familiar today come from the silent film comedies. Silent film comedy had true universal appeal, as knowledge of the language was unnecessary. As was the case with Vaudeville, the character and her routine of gags is more important to the silent film comedy than the narrative.  

However, film comedy would not remain the prominent genre that it had been in the 1920s. While audiences seem to be forgiving of dramatic films that reuse plot elements and character identities from film to film, audiences immediately notice when the same gag or comic situation is reused. As I stated before, similar gags not only kept their impact over a period of a couple decades, but rather for centuries.  Consider the influence of Vaudeville’s episodic structure on film comedy, and how the medium of film allowed for the filmmaker to insert gags at any moment of the film.  A gag recycled from earlier films may even recur in the same film, if the context allows.

Film comedy changed style more drastically than any other genre out of necessity, 
meaning that verbal comedy became the main form of comic expression.  Comic style also became more diverse as the homogenous style of slapstick comedy branched out into “comedian comedies” and Screwball comedies. But verbal comedy did not eliminate all forms of physical comedy, as some of the most successful comedians developed trademarks with their physical mannerisms. Indeed, physical comic styles did not die completely in favor of purely verbal comedy.  Rather, they remained ever present, synthesizing a greater comic impact than verbal comedy could alone. In the 1930s, comedy did not simply coexist with drama, it complemented it. Sometimes only comedy is daring enough to show society as it really is.

The next major technical innovation after the sound film was television, which became the primary showcase for comedy in the 1950s.  As a result of this transition, among other causes, few notable film comedies came from American studios in the 1950s when compared to other decades.

The most successful American comic director of the 1950s would have to be Billy Wilder.  His definitive comedies The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like It Hot (1959), described by some film scholars as “sex comedies”, form practically a subgenre of their own.  Also, I would argue that none other than Marilyn Monroe was the most successful American comic film performer of the 1950s. Nearly every comedy film in which she starred was a commercial and critical success, in part because she worked with some of the most critically acclaimed directors of the time.  Keep in mind that, although she has now been dead for fifty years, she remains one of the most popular cultural icons.  Licensing fees for the use of her likeness alone still earn millions for her estate every year.  Her legacy is indisputable as is her influence on American popular culture and on comedy.

While the American film industry suffered during the Red Scare of the 1950s, British film comedy found a sort of renaissance. Ironically, the successful British comedies of the mid Twentieth Century had their roots in documentary—a genre that relies on a strict narrative structure, unlike comedy. It seems as if the filmmakers of the United Kingdom had to wait for the output of American comedies to stall in order for international audiences to appreciate their distinguishing brand of comedy.

The two most influential British comic performers of the mid Century were Alec Guinness, who was equally as comfortable in the historical epics of David Lean as he was playing multiple roles in Ealing Comedies, and Peter Sellers. These two performers introduced the world of comedy to the unprecedented feat of one actor portraying multiple roles within one film—and sometimes within one scene, as Guinness does in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949).

Although I admit that many so-called “character actors” populate dramas, if one performer were to play multiple roles in a single dramatic film, it would give the impression of a low budget production that could not hire enough talent.  But in the realm of film comedy, the ability of one actor to portray multiple convincing characters in a single film is a demonstration of that performer’s prowess.  Note how this quality of performance unique to comedy in the field of motion pictures comes from the theatre, in which a one-performer show—whether comic or dramatic—seems to denote an accomplished performer.

By the early 1960s, British and American filmmakers seemed to return to a uniform style of comedy.  For 1960s and 1970s comedy, parody was the order of the day. In the United States, Mel Brooks imitated classic Westerns in Blazing Saddles (1974) and classic Horror with Young Frankenstein (1974).  Woody Allen used an actual Japanese film that he redubbed in order to lampoon poorly dubbed foreign films in What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) and he parodied documentaries with Take The Money and Run (1969) and Zelig (1983).  The team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker satirized the disaster movies that had become popular in the 1970s, including notable entries like Airport (George Seaton 1970), The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame 1972), Earthquake (Mark Robson 1974), and The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin and Irwin Allen 1974), with their critically acclaimed Airplane! (1980).  Although some scholars may argue that Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) parodies Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe (1964), I disagree with this assessment.  Kubrick released Dr. Strangelove in January 1964, while Lumet released his film in October 1964—nearly a year later.  It is quite possible that Kubrick had read the novel Fail-Safe (published 1962) and was aware that a film version of the novel was in the works.  However, if Kubrick had wanted his film to function as a parody of Fail-Safe, he would have waited for Lumet to release the aforementioned film.  In addition, the credits of Dr. Strangelove clearly attribute the story to Peter George’s novel Red Alert (published 1958).  For these reasons, I believe that Dr. Strangelove is not part of the parody tradition.  Instead, it most closely follows the methods of the Anarchic Comedies.  Concurrently, versatile filmmaker Blake Edwards parodied the James Bond franchise with a series of films beginning with The Pink Panther (1963).  The success of this series owes much to the performances of Peter Sellers and to the music of Henry Mancini.  In the 1970s, the Monty Python comedy troupe lampooned historical epics in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979).

One curious point that I wish to make about parody is that so often the resulting parody is of a higher caliber of technique and aesthetics than the original film that it parodies.  Filmmakers begin work on a parody with the assumption that the viewer will be familiar with the original source, but a well-made parody can succeed on its own without requiring the viewer to have any existing knowledge of the source.  Most viewers will arrive at a parody knowing the rules for the particular genre or genres that the comedy film parodies. The most successful parodies work because they purposefully go against the rules of the parodied genre.


The 1970s ended with a return to romantic comedy as the primary subgenre of comedy with films such as Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979) and Edwards’ 10 (1979) finding popular and critical success.  Arguably, this trend continues into later comedies, like Moonstruck (Norman Jewison 1987), Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell 1994), Bridget Jones’s Diary (Sharon Maguire 2001) and more recently, The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius 2011).
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6/20/2021 0 Comments

Film- All About Camera Angles

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Often what are described as camera angles have nothing to do with angles at odd degrees. Most of the time, the camera setup is based on distance from the subject, choice of lens, and camera height. With combinations of these three ideas, a filmmaker can create dozens of creative shots that not only affect the viewer subconsciously but also can help to further the plot and character development. I will describe each of these ideas.

Distance

The first idea to consider when placing a camera is distance from the subject. Obviously the options are greater in an open outdoor space than an enclosed indoor space. For the basics, moving the camera closer to the subject makes the subject larger in the frame. Moving the camera away from the subject makes the subject appear smaller in the frame. A word of caution here about using a zoom lens or feature instead of moving the camera. Many consumer level cameras offer a wide zoom range, sometimes listed as 300x or more. However, it is important to understand the difference between optical zoom (meaning an effect of the zoom lens) and digital zoom (meaning that the camera is simply blowing up the original image). While optical zoom is a practical effect, digital zoom is no different than zooming in on a picture on the computer. The quality of the image gets worse the closer you try to zoom in. Because of this, I recommend moving the camera closer to the subject than relying on a zoom feature.

Lenses

Here is where the options can get really interesting. Lenses affect the depth of the image also called depth of field. When we say depth for photography, it is basically the apparent distance between the subject and the background. There are many types of lenses, but the basic ones are wide, normal, and telephoto (a zoom lens is one that can transition between these). 

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Wide

These types of lenses allow the largest canvases. They also make the background appear as far removed from the subject. For traditional extremely wide shots, the entire landscape is in focus. Wide shots are often used to establish a new location. They can also be used for great effect to show contrasts. A tiny house in a huge field can be very effective. Two people standing on opposite sides of the image can be symbolic of the emotional distance between them.

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Normal

This can be thought of as medium--not too wide; not too close. The background appears medium distance from the subject, depending on the distance from the subject, the background may be more in focus or more blurry. Two subjects can appear together in this type of shot and still be in focus.

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Telephoto

These lenses are the closest and are meant to focus on the subject, often blurring out the background. They are often only used for two subjects close together or just one subject. The focus can change during a shot to move between subject and background.

Combinations of Distance and Lens

When you combine distance with different types of lenses, you get some creative effects. With a wide angle lens, you can still move the camera very close to the subject and the background will appear very far while the subject takes up most of the frame. In contrast, with a telephoto lens, you can move the camera far from the subject and still have the subject large in the frame.

As one can see, combining distance and lens type can allow the filmmaker to focus on certain parts of the frame or bring out details sharper. The eye is automatically drawn to the parts of the image that are sharper. In this way, the filmmaker forces the viewer to focus on the desired parts of the image.

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Height

Height is another element of camera placement. The average shot is at eye level, but by altering the height of the camera, the filmmaker can show character perspectives and power relationships.

When a character walks down a street, if the view is from a window, it may indicate the character is being watched. When one character is filmed from below while another is filmed from above it could show the power and influence one character has over another.

Height can be combined with distance and lenses to add another layer of information to a shot, but height is often best used subtly so that it affects the viewer subconsciously. Used too much or too obviously and the height of the camera can become comical, unless that is the intention.

As you can see, combining distance from the subject, various senses, and camera height, there are dozens of different types of shots available to the filmmaker. The best shots are the ones the contribute to the story and enhance the characters.

Let me know if you have questions!

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6/7/2021 0 Comments

Film- Origins of Film Comedy: The 19th Century

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Literature

Many would find it odd to see Jane Austen (1775-1817) listed amongst the great creators of comedy, but here I present her as not only the first notable female writer of comedy, but also as someone who today scholars still discuss as one of the most frank and observant social critics.


One would not seem to read Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility in order to enjoy an elaborate farce, but by looking to the Medieval definition of comedy that describes comedy as a story with a happy ending, as in Dante, one can see that Austen’s novels end with the joyful union of lovers.  Austen has the keen ability of capturing the humorous side of characters, as one would encounter it in everyday life. Austen acknowledged the necessity of comedy for a person’s feeling of well-being. 

Music

In the time since Mozart, composers such as Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868; The Barber of Seville) and Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848; Don Pasquale) succeeded him in the crafting of comic gems.  

Today, audiences everywhere are familiar with the music of Rossini, though they may not know it, for Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes appropriated much of it.  As one can see through the Looney Tunes’ use of his music, Rossini’s operas present such a complete view of comedy.  Not only are the libretti and situations humorous, the very quality of the music, with its twists and surprises, is comical.

The prolific Gaetano Donizetti succeeded Rossini in the genre of Opera Buffa, crafting several successful examples of the form. One can see many of the gags known to slapstick films and the situations of the Screwball Comedies as being mainstays of Rossini and Donizetti’s operas.  

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The Victorian Era

(British Empire: ~1840-1900 AD)

Few time periods in the history of the Western World have seemed to follow so many implied social rules than the Victorian Era.  It was precisely for this reason that the Victorian Era needed comedy—something that can exist outside of social boundaries.

While one would seem off base labeling Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol as comedies, one needs to note how Charles Dickens (1812-1870) does craft many rich comic characters and situations.  Numerous critics and scholars praise Dickens for his humor.  

Early filmmakers, including D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, who also theorized about effective filmmaking, often cited Dickens as a source of inspiration for the multifaceted structuring of narrative.  Dickens demonstrated how the reader could experience concurrent action in a novel, a structure also possible in film, unlike live theatre.  Comic filmmakers soon adopted the narrative techniques of Dickens as Griffith and Eisenstein had utilized them.  
 
In Dickens, we see comedy as a relief from the pains of life.  Like Chaplin, Dickens grew up in poverty and felt a connection to the common people, pursuing comedy as a relief in the Medieval comedy, which also appears in Sullivan’s Travels (1942).  Chaplin, Dickens, and (to a point) Sturges, were all populists who could approach social injustices through the lens of comedy.

Like Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Mozart before him, Dickens created many rich comic characters. If laughter truly is a group activity, perhaps laughter allows the reader to affirm the comic character. Few authors would shape the philosophy of depression era filmmakers such as Chaplin and Sturges—working with urban settings—more so than Charles Dickens.

Romantic Period

(Europe and the United States: ~1815-1910)

When we move into the Romantic period of art, literature, theatre, and music, we find that, “Romantic dramatists preferred tragedy to comedy” (Ousby), which makes sense in an era of industrial change, war, social upheaval, scientific and medical discoveries, and changing national identities.  If the reader considers that one of the elements of Romanticism, personal feelings and individuality, it is not surprising that comedy—which is an expressive form that is meant to be shared—should not catch the attention of Romantic critics.

In music, it is interesting that of all of Bedrich Smetana’s opera works, it is the comedy for which he is remembered best.  Comedy makes people feel good, and one can always remember the feeling that a comedy inspired.  French composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) held the world stage with a variety of comic operas. Offenbach was able to take the satire of Swift and mold it into a musical form. It is ironic that Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), who began his career with a comedy—decided to end his career with a comedy as well.  It is still performed today to enormous popularity.  

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Transitional Years

(Europe and the United States: ~1880-1930)

Much like the case with Verdi, Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is known for his tragic operas.  However, his Gianni Schicchi, based on a character from Dante, is a highly praised comic opera. Like Puccini’s skill in comedy as well as tragedy, some of the most notable comic filmmakers like Billy Wilder, W.S. Van Dyke, and George Cukor, could also succeed in non-comic genres.  One only has to think of Double Indemnity (Wilder 1944), Tarzan the Ape Man (Van Dyke 1932), and Gaslight (Cukor 1944), to see this versatility in action.  
  
The comic opera tradition continued with the works of three separate composers.  In Vienna, Johann Strauss (1825-1899), “the Waltz King”, composed Die Fledermaus, with annual New Years performances still selling out fifteen years in advance, As we see with several film comedies like Chaplin’s City Lights (1931) or Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959), a comedy may be successful commercially and critically at its release and continue to be so.  Often, as with Verdi’s Falstaff or Strauss’ Fledermaus, the appeal is partly due to the comic creators and performers’ existing reputations.  

In the United Kingdom, librettist William Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) collaborated on several comic operettas including The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Mikado. In a similar way, American composer Victor Herbert created such comic operettas as Eileen, Naughty Marietta, and The Red Mill.  

In the realm of literature, Mark Twain (born Samuel Clemens; 1835-1910) is still one of the world’s most influential writers. Twain’s comic style relates to the social critique of Dickens and Chaplin, as well as to the satire of Swift.  In a later work, The Mysterious Stranger: A Romance, Twain proclaimed the power of comedy. It is a terribly important fact for American film comedy that one of America’s greatest writers specialized in comedy, particularly the ability to observe the people and situations of everyday life.

Part of the next generation after Mark Twain, composer/conductor John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) became quite a prolific writer of comic operettas, though today, the general public and most music historians remember Sousa as the “March King”. Sousa’s dream, in fact, had always been to be a musical theater composer, not a band conductor. Despite this, many music reference texts do not even mention Sousa’s operettas in his biographies.  Sousa’s work on Our Flirtations and other arrangements made him well known in the music world. Sousa wrote nine comic operettas, however, Sousa’s operettas fell out of favor with audiences and critics just as silent film comedy was reaching the forefront of American popular entertainment and art.  Many historians attribute the failure of his final show to the fact that it was the product of an era that had already passed in America, Sousa’s operettas and those like them still exerted an influence on the later anarchic sound comedies of W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis—especially in the musical interludes of the latter three comedy teams.  One should note how easily aspects of comic musical theater were absorbed into the comedy of the sound film.

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5/10/2021 0 Comments

Film- Origins of Film Comedy: The Baroque and Classical Periods

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(Europe: ~1600-1750 AD)

One of the major showcases for comedy in the last few centuries has been in the form of musical presentations.  The musical form that we now know as Opera began as a reaction against the musical style of the late Renaissance period.  Unlike the musical works performed in the courts of monarchs and wealthy families, Opera was a public presentation made of content that reflected the tastes of the expanding audiences.  

The early Opera Seria, or “Serious Opera”, told stories of deities, demigods, and epic heroes.  These Opera Seria included three Acts and a prescribed number of arias per singer.  At first, the Opera Seria had no comic counterpart.  But after some time, audiences became bored with the strict structure of the Opera Seria and the esoteric nature of the characters and narratives within them.  As a response to this dissatisfaction, composers began to write short comic intermezzi to present in between the acts of the Opera Seria.  Unlike the Opera Seria, the comic intermezzi featured characters to whom the common people could relate.  Once again, as with Terence, we see one of the major aspects in the development of film comedy: the influence that audience taste exerts on what comic writers create.  The plot of the early intermezzi usually came in a two-act structure (one act between each act of the Opera Seria) and often involved humorous, realistic situations, such as an older man trying frantically to woo a younger woman.

The unexpected happened when these comic intermezzi became more popular than the Opera Seria for which the composers had created them to accompany.  These comic intermezzi evolved into the standalone Opera Buffa, or “comic opera”.  One could argue that the leading expression of comedy at this time, and the one that reached the widest audience was in the form of Opera Buffa.

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Opera Comique
(France: ~1680-1800 AD)

   In the same era, the French musical scene explored forms of parody and we find the first use of the term vaudeville. These forms of light entertainment soon developed into comic operas, known in France as the Opéra Comique. The Opéra Comique appealed to audiences of a higher class when compared to the lower class patrons of earlier vaudevilles, much as the American vaudeville attracted mostly low-income patrons.  Consider that the visual character, as well as the fast pacing and episodic form, of both the early French and later American Vaudeville could appeal to likely illiterate French lower class audiences and the barely English-literate immigrant American audiences.  The performances could be entertaining without a need to understand the subtleties of the language.

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The Age of Enlightenment

(Europe: ~1700-1800 AD)

In the realm of literature,few writers, save for Machiavelli, can claim to have as much possession of dark irony and biting satire than Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).  The comic subgenre of satire was forever changed when he published Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Swift demonstrated how far straight-faced satire could really go, and multiple comedy films follow in his footsteps, most notably Duck Soup (1933) and Dr. Strangelove (1964).

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In the world of music, “child prodigy”, “musical genius”, and “one of the world’s greatest composers”, are just a few of the dozens of adjectives one could use to describe Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).  I would like to add to this list that he is also one of the world’s greatest craftsmen of comedy.  Comic Opera reached its pinnacle with Mozart. His trio of operas with librettos by Lorenzo Da Ponte, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi Fan Tutte, and his German singspiele, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (with libretto by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner) and The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte, with libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder) remain both popular today and praised by scholars as prominent works.  The recurring theme of disguises and role-playing within comedy appears in both Così Fan Tutte (when the protagonists masquerade as Albanians) and in The Marriage of Figaro (when the Countess and Susanna trade places).  

Mozart adapted the conventions of existing comedies to suit his comic operas, which in turn went on to influence future comedians, including filmmakers.  Consider the subject of mistaken identity, as seen in Duck Soup (1933) when Chico and Harpo impersonate Groucho.  The same subject appeared earlier in Così Fan Tutte, when Guglielmo and Ferrando disguise themselves as Albanians, and in The Marriage of Figaro, in which the Count believes he is flirting with Susanna but it is actually the Countess.  The comedy in Mozart’s operas continues to impact the comic writing of others and the scholarly writing about comedy.

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4/12/2021 0 Comments

Film- Origins of Film Comedy: The Renaissance

(Europe: ~1400-1600 AD)

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The Renaissance period presented a renewed appreciation for art and creativity and scholars still revere many of the comedies written during this period. Many writers of this time acknowledged the profound potential of comedy, understanding that a genre that prides itself in avoiding seriousness could still make serious statements about life, society, culture, and humanity, just as earlier writers had discovered and contemporary writers still explore.  

However, despite the growing inspiration of artists during the Renaissance, comedy still remained a lesser form of expression in the eyes of critics.

In the same vein as the Italian Commedia dell’Arte, that continued into the Renaissance, was the Comedy of Humours of Renaissance England. It is due to the influence of Commedia dell’Arte and the Comedy of Humours that we see stock characters in many comedy films.  For example, the character of the wealthy woman (usually an older relative of the protagonist) appears in Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks 1934), The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937), Bringing Up Baby (Hawks 1938), and His Girl Friday (Hawks 1940), just to name a few.  The narratives are not the same, simply the replicated character.

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Erasmus
The foremost comic theorist of the Renaissance was Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Erasmus wrote along the lines of art for art’s sake.  He felt that one should appreciate comedy as something that has value in itself, not for what comedy can teach or to what it can lead.  He also used humor in his critical writings, Erasmus’ best-known work that discusses comedy is his In Praise of Folly. In the writings of Erasmus, we find support for the argument that critics and scholars should judge comedy works for what they are, not how well they can approximate another genre.
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Shakespeare
The greatest comic writer of the Renaissance, and perhaps the most celebrated playwright of all time, William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was as much a master of comedy as he was a master of tragedies, romances, and histories. He crafted comic situations and characterizations that are still relevant in today’s comedy, and no two of his comic plays are exactly alike. As we are able to see in his plays, Shakespeare inherited his treatment of comedy and his methods for crafting it from many older comic sources.  We know that the works of Menander, Plautus, and Terence were part of the curriculum in most European schools at the time.  From this fact, and from the similarity of some of his comedy to that of the Classics, we can surmise that Shakespeare would have encountered the comic works of Classical and Medieval comedians during his schooling.  

He used all of this acquired knowledge of past comedies in order to synthesize his own. Shakespeare had the ability to take both paths of artistic innovation—he followed the styles of earlier writers and created scenarios uniquely his own.

A lot of literary scholars conclude that the Medieval Carnival played an important part in the shaping of Shakespeare’s approach to comedy. However, one cannot discuss Shakespeare without mentioning his exquisite originality. As I mentioned in the post about Classical Comedy, the works of Plautus and Terence were taught in Renaissance schools, plausibly linking Shakespeare’s comedies as a continuation of the Classical New Comedy. Shakespeare used comedy to instruct because it is a form that could have been understood by the wealthy Globe patrons in the balconies as well as by the ‘Groundlings’.  Comedy has the power to address all social classes.
   
 Unlike the comic characters of Ancient Greece, Shakespeare’s comic characters exist for a purpose beyond comic relief. Most often, his comic characters are deep and fully formed. As genuine, convincing, and believable comic characters, they live on in dozens of like types and in the comic situations of film. Through the convincing realism of his comic characters, we once again see that comedy stays close to reality.  Unlike the ironic characters seen in some forms of comedy, Shakespeare’s comic protagonists are often willing to admit their flaws. There is a sense of self-discovery in his character studies. Maybe this humanness is why Shakespeare’s comic characters, just like George Webber of 10 (Blake Edwards 1979) or Felix and Oscar of The Odd Couple (Gene Saks 1968), are so appealing to audiences—they are not all “put together” and they do not know in what direction they are headed.  Unlike the heroes of non-comic works, that often seem to have a clear purpose and clear objectives, the comic hero is much like the typical viewer that focuses more on the present and life’s little mishaps than on his or her “destiny”.

Comedy is the only genre that can comfortably and successfully deal with subjects that are taboo.  One of these subjects, of course, is death. Death is present in so many narratives of Shakespeare, but in his comedies, death does not have the final say. For example, consider Claudio’s ruminations on death in Measure for Measure or how The Comedy of Errors begins with a death sentence for Aegeon.  Following Shakespeare’s influence, numerous film comedies deal with death—consider Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra 1944), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer 1949), or M*A*S*H (Robert Altman 1970)—but often, as in Shakespeare, as an afterthought.  

With Shakespeare, we first see the term Comedy of Manners as applied to New Comedy social situations. Just as Shakespeare can discuss death through comedy, he is also able to discuss law, class differences, and government through the same lens. The films of Chaplin, Sturges, and the Marx Brothers all exploit the nature of encounters between people of different classes. Shakespeare often used foreign settings in order to criticize his own government without becoming too overt. In much the same way, Duck Soup (Leo McCarey 1933) mocks governments and war without directly mentioning any real countries by creating the fictional countries of Freedonia and Sylvania.  Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his last play and one of his most acclaimed, is laced with social critique. Shakespeare is free to discuss social issues in The Tempest, because of its setting on an unknown island.
  
Impersonation in film comedy has had a lasting impression over the years, whether it is Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis disguised as women in Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder 1959), Chico and Harpo Marx both dressed as Groucho in Duck Soup (1933), or Jack Lemmon seemingly taking on the traditional roles of a woman in The Odd Couple (1968).  Shakespeare’s comedies include many instances of deception and imitation. Often important plot points revolve around a character that is disguised for a particular reason, which Mozart later expands upon in his Cosi Fan Tutte and Marriage of Figaro.  Recognize though, that the place of cross-dressing as a part of performance in Shakespeare’s day was much different from that of Mozart’s day and later eras.  Male actors filled both male and female roles in a Shakespeare play during his lifetime, making a cross-dressed man not an unexpected joke, but something taken for granted as commonplace.  

Shakespeare’s comedies have retained their status among critics and scholars, but the popularity of specific plays may rise and fall in cycles over time.  In much the same way, we find films that are praised by critics and yet fail at the box office, only for audiences to rediscover it years later.  Regardless of their popularity at any given time, the conventions that Shakespeare both adopted and synthesized continue to influence new comedies.

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Cervantes
A contemporary of Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) is one of the most praised Spanish writers of all time, especially for his creation of Don Quixote, one of the world’s favorite characters of any genre. Much of the humor of the character comes from that which he imagines, just like when the character of Richard Sherman in The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder 1955) thinks of the women in his life, or George Webber in 10 (1979), as his fantasy eventually becomes a reality.


This quality of authenticity both of the comic characters’ demeanors and of their actions is an essential attribute of many comic characters.  The comic heroine does not see herself or her own actions as funny.  She behaves in a way that is logical to her—following the Principle of Comic Logic.  A great film example of this is the character of Inspector Clousseau in Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther series.  Throughout his antics, Clousseau views himself as a gifted investigator, clever sleuth, and shameless womanizer—not the bumbling idiot that the viewer and most of the other characters see. Don Quixote was (and still is) successful critically and popularly. No proper study of comedy is complete without it.

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3/15/2021 0 Comments

Film: Scene vs. Sequence

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These two ideas may be the most confused terms in filmmaking. Part of the reason for this confusion is that the definition of each term changes depending on context.

For simplicity, think of a scene as an event that occurs in one location. It is a smaller unit. A sequence is a series of scenes that when put together create an overarching plot.

Now to get to the more complex. In the early stages of making a film, every location change is listed as a new scene. The location does not have to change drastically. The change could be from inside a house to outside the same house, but each change would be listed as a scene. 
SCENE INT. HOUSE

SCENE EXT. HOUSE

SCENE INT. HOUSE

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While filming the above example, you would film all the dialogue or action inside the house at one time and then all the dialogue or action outside the house at another time. To go back and forth between two locations (no matter how close) would mean wasting a lot of time setting up equipment and taking it down. In this case, the scene would probably be considered everything being filmed at one location at one time even if it does not appear chronologically this way in the finished product.

So now that we know how a scene is defined in the script and during filming, how does it change during editing?

Most video editing programs have the ability to find enough changes in imported footage to automatically separate shots into different scenes.

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Notice I used the term “shot”. What is that? I thought we were talking about scenes and sequences!

If a scene is the same as a foot and a sequence is a yard, then shots would be inches. A shot is every time there is a different camera setup. So a wide shot of a table would be a different shot than a closeup of an apple on the table and a different shot than an extreme closeup of the stem of the apple. A series of shots make a scene.

Now that we have defined shot and scene, let’s look at what happens when we connect scenes together--we create a sequence.

Most video editing programs call different tabs of footage sequences.

How can we tell when something is a sequence and more than just a scene?

A sequence presents a larger plot structure than just a scene. A sequence may be a long journey. The individual scenes could be a character at the airport, boarding a plane, the plane in the sky, and the plane landing on a runway. As you can see, each one of these would be a separate scene (complete with several shots) but all clearly related in one sequence that furthers the plot.

By varying the length of shots, the number of shots, the length of scenes, and how many scenes make up a sequence, a filmmaker can change the apparent speed of a movie--the pacing.

So, to recap: every different camera setup is a shot, shots combine to make scenes, and scenes combine to make sequences.

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2/15/2021 0 Comments

Film- The Origins of Film Comedy: Medieval Comedy

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(Europe: 500~1400 AD)

Although popular accounts of the general mood of Europe in the Middle Ages is rather morose, focused on plagues, wars, and poverty, comedy had a vital place in those societies. Out of this era, we not only find a great number of comedies, but a great variety of comedy as well, 

The comedies of this time appear in the vernacular, contrasted with “serious” writing in Latin.  Of course, this trait affected how widespread a comedy’s influence may be as only one who can understand the language may appreciate the comedy without the aid of a translation—physical comedy excluded, of course.  The early Medieval definition of comedy was actually quite free and many works could qualify as a comedy as long as it included a happy ending. 

Often this idea has been confused with the Classical definitions of comedy, which were actually much more detailed and explicit in what qualified as comedy.  This Medieval definition is possibly one of the reasons why today there is so much debate over what qualities make something a comedy.  It is important to remember that only the wealthiest in the Middle Ages had the luxury of even knowing about Classical Comedy through reading it.  The majority of the population was illiterate and therefore we see examples of characters like devils and vice figures.

As I said above, the wealthy, educated members of the societies would have access to the Classical comedy of Menander, Plautus, Terence and others, but the majority of society would not have had this experience.  Without knowing the existing conventions of written comedy, crafters of comedy in the Middle Ages had to determine their own ideas of what made a comedy, with the aid of their experience of comedies that would have been handed down orally across cultures.
   
Medieval carnivals became the showcase for comic performers. For a brief time, commoners and royalty alike could escape the reality of the world around them by means of comedy. This sense of Carnival returns in later comedies, including the works of Shakespeare, Mozart, and of course, Monty Python.  As I have stated in earlier posts, comedy is a group activity, and we can clearly see its roots in the Medieval Carnival.  However, in this same atmosphere of the Carnival, one can see a reinforcement of the notion of comedy as being a lesser art.  For indeed, comedy in the Middle Ages came from the lowly Court Jester, not the royalty. Once again, we find the comic hero coming from a low social order, as he will continue to do throughout Shakespeare, Mozart, Chaplin, and more.  Note how the comic hero in any era is quite different from the contemporary tragedies and their heroic figures.

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Dante
 Many examples of Medieval comedy demonstrate an appreciation of crude humor. It does not need to be argued that crude humor still exists today, regardless of how low it resides on the comic spectrum. Crude humor was a large part of the early Greek comedies as well, continuing in Dante’s Divine Comedy, considered not only one of the greatest vernacular Italian works but one of the greatest works in any language.  Consider that writing in the vernacular gave Dante (ca. 1265-1321 AD) the opportunity to experiment with crude humor, as crude humor would not have been as acceptable in a work written in the “high” language of Latin.  Scholars praise Dante not only for his comedy but for the depth of his allegorical and theological sense as well.  This endurance marks the power of comedy, even when it is seemingly at its most profane.  Dante’s comedy works as a foil to his serious nature of his journey through Hell.

As a Twentieth Century analogy to Dante’s exploration of the profane, consider the reaction to nudity in motion pictures throughout the Twentieth Century.  Nudity was understood as an artistic exploration in pre-Code American motion pictures that mostly appeared in art museums and the like.  However, once the Hays Code was established and films were intended for mass audience appeal, people then understood nudity as pornographic.  Later in the century, we see the same discrepancy based on the context in which the nudity is framed when nudity in a 1960s art house picture would be “tasteful” while nudity in a mainstream picture would be “exploitation”.  As it has been in the debate of aestheticism of the human body versus pornography for centuries, the actual subject of nudity did not change; the societal reaction to that subject did, based on the contextual framing.  In much the same way, a comic work like Dante’s can have the reputation of being licentious in one era while in another era it can have the reputation of being one of the greatest works of Western literature—depending on how one wishes to interpret the nature of his comedy.  

In the centuries since Dante, many artists like Jonathan Swift, Mozart, and Mel Brooks have followed his example and explored crude humor. Out of this canon of Medieval comedy, we find the origins of farce,  When a film attempts to enter the realm of farce, it encounters a type of comedy that has existed for hundreds of years, but one that has never really been critically well recognized.


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Boccaccio
The next significant comic writer after Dante has to be Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375).  Boccaccio studied Dante extensively and was influenced by his Divine Comedy, but Boccaccio often seems to use humor much more explicitly than his predecessor.  Boccaccio’s most significant contribution to the genre of comedy is his Decameron. In The Decameron, a frame narrative occurs across ten days, and each day’s stories feature a different style of humor.  The Decameron became popular as soon as Boccaccio wrote it.

The fact that the Decameron appeared in translations across Europe meant that it could reach a wide audience and have great influence on writers from many different cultural backgrounds.  Although there are litterateurs that question the originality of the stories that Boccaccio includes in his work, it is because of Boccaccio that the stories reached writers from other countries, and 
even filmmakers have followed Boccaccio’s example of using comedy as a tool for teaching moral lessons.Even more than Dante, Boccaccio demonstrates how crude humor can sometimes be the most effective means of delivering social criticism.

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Chaucer
Many Medieval scholars argue that no writer was more influenced by Boccaccio than William Chaucer (1343-1400). But just like any great craftsman, Chaucer learned from the style of Boccaccio to create a work distinctly his own.  Chaucer continues with Boccaccio’s ability to teach through comedy.  Through humor, Chaucer leaves his readers with a memorable experience, but one that will cause them to reflect on their own moral dilemmas.

From the Sixteenth Century theatre of Italy came the stylized Commedia dell’Arte, of zany situations and physical stunts.  It is curious that something with the word “Art” in its title so closely resembles the slapstick film comedies, which are not held in so high a regard. The Commedia dell’Arte method of incorporating numerous gags and stock characters influenced many artists, including Shakespeare and Mozart.  In addition to the comic routines and stock characters, Commedia dell’arte also exemplified physical comedy.  So out of this one style of Italian comedy comes the seed for not only the anarchic slapstick comedies of the 1930s, but the stock characters of the Screwball Comedies as well. 


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1/25/2021 0 Comments

Film- City Lights (1931, Charlie Chaplin)

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During the silent era, comedy was one of, if not the, most popular and critically acclaimed film genres. Criticism of silent comedy remained consistent into the post-sound era, reaching its best clarity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The art of pantomime—the communication of thoughts and emotions solely through the use of gestures and facial expressions—and the art of film were intertwined at this part of the century.

Although the Stock Market crash occurred in 1929, the economic situation continued to decline into 1931, the year of City Lights’ release. The character of the Tramp became even more relevant as so many of the film-going public could relate to someone down on his luck.

The first feature length, full-sound film was The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland 1927), however throughout 1928 when Chaplin began production on City Lights, the majority of films were still silent.  By 1931, when Chaplin released City Lights, sound films had become dominant.  As a silent character, the Little Tramp was the most well-known motion picture character in the world. 

Here we see what I first discussed in an earlier post, the difference between the universal silent humor and the localized verbal humor.  If City Lights were to fail commercially and critically, it would mean a sudden fall from the top for Chaplin.

Chaplin finally compromised by using synchronous music and sound effects, but still removing any need for dialogue. Although other films at the time used the same method of music and sound effects, Chaplin’s film remains the best example of the technique.


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Charlie Chaplin

One cannot find a text that discusses film comedy that does not mention Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977). It is important for the reader to understand that scholars write of Chaplin as an artist, not as a comedian. Many film historians write about Chaplin as one of the great creative minds. This view of Chaplin’s artistic merit, beyond that of an entertainer, helped shape his recognition as quite possibly the first auteur in the film world.

Chaplin handled many of the filmmaking tasks of writing, directing, acting, editing, and composing. Chaplin was an auteur before the impact of the French New Wave of the 1960s popularized the use of the term in film scholarship. Through his filmmaking methods, Chaplin set the standard by which scholars judge later auteurs.


Chaplin came from a family of music hall performers, where he developed the physicality of his performances. Chaplin described the rhythm of his physical pantomime as a dance, and few performers have demonstrated such subtle control over their bodies.  As the reader will discover shortly, Chaplin understood that the internal motion within a static shot was as significant to the medium of film as was the external motion of the camera in capturing a dynamic shot.

Some film historians have criticized Chaplin for what seems to be his lack of knowledge of film conventions.   I disagree with these scholars’ assessments of Chaplin’s filmmaking knowledge.  Chaplin went against the established conventions of film presentation not because he did not understand the conventions, but because he had already mastered them and could create his own conventions.  For example, instead of following the tradition of the wide shot to establish a scene and the closeup to reveal details, Chaplin preferred wide shots for his comic sequences, while he would only use closeups in order to capture the expression on his performers’ faces in moments of sentiment.  Other scholars criticize Chaplin for what they see as a lack of editing.  However, many critics feel that his lack of cuts is a strength, not a weakness, and I agree.
Other filmmakers do not hold shots as long, simply because they cannot.  Chaplin alone has the ability as performer and filmmaker to hold the viewer’s attention without having to divert it through a change of angle.  The cuts—when he does use them—are a textbook model of invisible editing.  
Chaplin’s ability as a supreme artist rests partly on the fact that he understood not only exactly what to show the viewer, but also how to show it to the viewer in a way that made the technique unobtrusive. Of all the comic filmmakers and performers, no artist has ever been better at juxtaposing comedy and tragedy without detracting from either. At the end of City Lights, we have experienced an incredible emotional and aesthetic experience, but we do not feel cheated out of a good laugh.


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Production

As I stated above, Chaplin was the biggest movie star in the world as he began work on City Lights. With his previous succession of films, his audience had high expectations for Chaplin’s next work, and he was not one to disappoint.  

As for the preproduction stage of City Lights, the writing process was rather brief, with the major themes already chosen, and the story developing as shooting approached.  While the narrative of City Lights was an original idea of Chaplin, many of the gags came from earlier sources, including Chaplin shorts.  The greatest of artists, Chaplin included, always have the risk of duplicating previous work. As I noted in a previous post, the same gag can successfully return again and again as long as it is still able to elicit laughter.

 Influencing later filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, Chaplin had a hand in virtually every aspect of production.  Everything that Chaplin did involved thorough preparation and practice.  When it came to scoring the film, Chaplin had to rely on the assistance and experience of orchestrator Arthur Johnson. While Chaplin may have lacked the knowledge to notate music, he certainly understood how it should function within the film medium.


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Reception and Legacy

Without Chaplin’s skill and reputation, a silent film during the sound error would not have succeeded. The critics of nearly every major publication in the United States agreed that City Lights was a triumph.  Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times said that “It is a film worked out with admirable artistry, and while Chaplin stoops to conquer, as he has invariably done, he achieves success”.  Box Office Magazine called it Chaplin’s “finest comedy” and praised its story as well as the performances of its cast.  Sid Silverman of Variety felt that it was a good film but “not Chaplin’s best picture, because the comedian has sacrificed speed to pathos” and had some doubts as to its “holdover power”, wondering if its initial success was “novelty money”.  In 1931, The National Board of Review named it one of the Top Ten Films of the year, adding that it is “a challenge to the talkies, a crucial event in cinema history” but “not Chaplin’s best but far ahead of any other funny man’s best”.  Time Magazine predicted “he, whose posterior would probably be recognized by more people throughout the world than would recognize any other man’s face, will be doing business after talkies have been traded in for television”.  Notice how each one of these critics speak of the film in terms of Chaplin, and do not address the themes that he explores.  They describe the “novelty” of the film and its silent qualities of gesture and expression.  The reviewers that criticize it, do so because of the relationship of comedy and pathos within the film.

As for the international critical reaction, Siegfried Kracauer of the Frankfurter Zeitung said that “In it Chaplin demonstrates again his mastery of the language of gesture, a mastery that reduces the spoken word to shame”, however he added “It’s not difficult to find weaknesses in the film” referring to a plot that he felt was not as strong as earlier Chaplin pictures.  Note how he echoes the above reviewers’ praises of the silent performance techniques of gesture.  Also, consider how Kracauer criticizes what he claims is a lack of plot—showing that Kracauer does not completely understand comedy’s necessary balance of narrative and gag.  E.A. Corbett of the Edmonton Journal concluded that “no one else in the world can take the same outline and make it compete successfully with the talkies, because no one else can so fully occupy that delicious, illogical, unreal world which Chaplin’s genius has created for himself alone,” approaching the film in terms of Chaplin.  Surprisingly, City Lights did not receive any Academy Award nomination, which seems inconceivable considering its reputation today.  Tim Dirks, of the American Movie Classics Filmsite attributed the lack of nominations, “to the pro-talking film Academy members, it must have appeared to be reversing the trend toward talkies that advanced sound films”, which would make sense.  The contemporary film industry leaders’ advocacy for the “progress” of sound in 1931, has a parallel with today’s film industry leaders, who seem to favor many pictures because of the perceived revolutionary visual effects that they contain.
 
I have been unable to find any explanation for why Chaplin chose to rerelease the film.  I speculate that perhaps newly-formed television networks had begun to program some of Chaplin’s shorts, and this could have brought an audience demand for Chaplin features.  Also, his most recent release, Monsieur Verdoux (1947), did not fare well with audiences and reviewers (TCM), perhaps prompting Chaplin to rerelease an earlier, more successful work in order to regain his reputation.  

In addition to film scholars and critics, many filmmakers have cited City Lights as an inspiration.  Both Stanley Kubrick (in 1963, Cinema Magazine) and Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (in 1972, Life Magazine) have called it one of their favorite pictures.  Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert has reviewed the film twice; reviewing it for a second time 35 years after the first review.  In 1972, he said, “Chaplin’s films age so well, I think, because his situations grow out of basic human hungers such as lust, greed, avarice”.  The reader will learn that this is true of many such film classics.  Ebert appears to be the first reviewer who talks about the deeper themes beneath the surface of City Lights—perhaps themes reviewers forty years earlier did not want to acknowledge.
    Of the seventeen reviews written in the Twenty First century that I have compiled, only one critic, Alan Vanneman of the Bright Lights Film Journal gave it a less than favorable review, citing the “remarkably unfunny beginning”, the “numerous detours” in the plot, and how “Chaplin leaves entirely unresolved how Cherrill will treat the Tramp now that she knows who he is”.  Looking at Vanneman’s review, we can infer that his expectations for a comedy were misaligned.  The “numerous detours” (gags) and the lack of resolution at the end of the narrative are perfectly acceptable for comedy—in fact, sometimes a lack of resolution is an even more fitting ending for a comedy than the typical deus ex machina found in so many dramas.  

The remaining sixteen critics praised the film, as dozens of critics had done when it premiered.  Four of the reviewers, Collin Souter of eFilmcritic.com, Jules Dassin of The Telegraph, Wes D. Gehring of USA Today, and John Nesbit of Old School Reviews particularly praised the final scene—a scene of pathos and not humor.  Several reviewers focused on the historical importance that it is one of the last silent films, and on Chaplin as an artist.  Dan Mancini of DVD Verdict called it “Chaplin at his best…. his last—and arguably finest—silent feature”.   Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich explained, “Below the surface of City Lights, there is an ache of nostalgia for the lost Eden of the silents that is still palpable today”.  James Berardinelli of Reelviews called it “the quintessential silent film”, adding that “sound would have ruined it”.  Jay Antani of CinemaWriter.com added, “City Lights is a great gift to all of us by a filmmaker at a latter-day peak of his genius. To see anything by Chaplin is to nourish the soul. Chaplin is good for the world”.  Other critics attempt to analyze the deeper meanings behind the narrative and gags of the film.  Following Ebert’s example, Dan Jardine of Cinemania noted its “universal themes, such as the intoxicating blindness of love and the rejuvenating power of selflessness”, speaking of the themes that contemporary reviewers did not address.  
    Many scholars have provided varying analyses of the film over the years.  Charles Silver of the Museum of Modern Art calls it “Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished and balanced work”, focusing on the combination of comedy and drama in one film.   Chaplin scholar Dan Kamin, on the other hand does criticize it on a structural level, “City Lights may have the best plot, and it certainly packs the biggest emotional wallop, but its comic routines are inconsistent in quality”.  The foci of both scholars show opposite ends of the same critical difficulty in approaching comedy.  Silver seems to appreciate it for its moments of sentiment, while Kamin seems to grade the value of a comedy by how funny he finds the gags.  They insist on comparing a comedy film to something that is not—for Silver, a non-comic film and for Kamin, a comic Vaudeville routine.

In 1952, critics at the British Film Institute voted it the second greatest film of all time, behind De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (BFI)—juxtaposing it with one of the quintessential film tragedies (especially during the European recovery from World War II when the BFI vote occurred).  In 2002, critics at the British Film Institute voted it one of the greatest films of all time (BFI).  In 2008, The American Film Institute declared it the greatest romantic comedy of all time (AFI).
In the 1970s, critics began to rethink their opinions on Chaplin, especially since more attention turned to Buster Keaton.  I highly recommend City Lights and think you will find it very approachable despite it being 90 years old.


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1/11/2021 0 Comments

Film- Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production

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There are three main phases to filmmaking (pre-production, production, and post-production), a fourth could be distribution at the end if you consider that separate from post-production. 

Pre-Production

Pre-production is everything that happens before the cameras start recording. For a large studio, it would begin with a story pitch or a script submission from a writer. For a small, independent filmmaker, this phase begins with an idea for a story. Don’t get carried away too soon. An idea is exciting. Flesh it out into a two or three page draft and see if the story is workable. Next, you will want to check your idea against what already exists. You don’t want to write an entire screenplay and then realize that you had actually seen it before and it’s The Godfather.


If you remember anything from this article, let it be this: the more work and preparation you can do during pre-production, the less work you will have to do during production and post-production.

As you work on the story, start by thinking of the biggest ideas before moving to the smaller ideas. Think of the general 5 act structure- introduction, action begins, complications, climax, and aftermath. In the first draft, you can write anything and do not worry about limitations. Do not worry about character names or dialogue. If the general structure of the story does not work, you will be wasting your time writing dialogue. Take it one step at a time.

One tendency that many writers seem to have is if the basic skeleton isn’t good, that adding more and more scenes will fix it. This is not a good solution. Instead of a small mess, you end up with a bloated mess. I’m saying this from experience. If a scene is not working, it is better to cut that scene than to try to write three more scenes to make up for the bad scene. The quality over quantity rule is true.

You will know the story itself is solid when every part is absolutely necessary and complements every other part. Necessary meaning that each part forwards the plot and builds the characters. If a scene or a sequence does not forward the plot or develop characters, it is probably safe to cut it.

When writing a screenplay, take it one step at a time. Do not worry about set design, camera angles or other details until the story and characters are solid. Those details can be added once you have everything else exactly the way it needs to be. 

Do not be afraid to have trusted mentors and other filmmakers critique your script. I know there is a fear that someone will steal your ideas, but then they aren’t really a friend if that happens. If you get too close to your own work, it is hard to step back and honestly evaluate something. Someone else can help you if the story is not clear (remember they cannot read the character’s thoughts as you, the creator, can). If it is not clear to someone critiquing the script, it will not be clear to the viewer once filmed.

In terms of technical difficulty, do not be afraid of the reach of your story. Complex set pieces or situations can sometimes be solved simply. A planet with 6 months of total darkness just needs to be filmed at night. A story taking place in an 84 story building just needs a still image establishing shot before interior scenes.

Once, and only when, the script is complete, there are many other aspects to the pre-production phase. Some go in order and others can be happening simultaneously (depending on the size of your crew). Ordered events would include storyboarding the shots (there is now software to assist with this if you are not confident with your drawing ability or have a friend willing to draw), blocking out camera and light positions, character positions, etc.

Other items that could be happening at various times is auditioning actors, location scouting (including asking business and property owners' permission to film at their location), designing and building sets, collecting props, designing and making costumes, designing makeup and hair (actors would probably need to be chosen first), being sure you have the lighting, camera, and sound equipment that you need, and other details.

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Production

Again, everything must be planned before this phase begins.

Out of the three phases, production is the phase that you do not want to waste any time. If you are renting space or equipment, you may be charged by the day. Members of the crew and performers could be paid by the day (or hour). 

As the person in charge (we are assuming for this article), have everything that can be set up ready the night before the shoot if you have access to the set then. If not, get to the set as early as possible and schedule at least 1 hour for yourself to be there before any crew and at least 2 hours before any performers would arrive. This time will pay off later.

Be sure that your crew knows exactly how to do each task that is required of them before it needs to be done. You don’t want to have to do everything yourself. A little bit of training for a crewmember makes your life easier.

Murphy’s Law tells us that you have to plan for the worst to happen. This is when creativity and true artistry can be expressed. If you had planned on a three camera setup and one camera malfunctions, you need to be able to decide in the moment how to compensate. With enough experience, you will be able to see the potential finished shots in your head and adjust accordingly. Trust your instincts and trust your crew. It will take less time to review your takes after an entire scene than to wait and check each shot one at a time. 

Patience, kindness, and professionalism are key qualities during production. You may be hot, tired, and hungry the entire time, but you continue to smile and encourage everyone else. Hold people accountable for their specific tasks but do not get upset with someone when in a situation that is outside of their control, it will not help move things along.

When you predict how long it will take to shoot what you need at a given location, always add an hour to that. If you think you can film all the office building scenes in 8 hours, schedule for 9 just so people are not ticked off when they have to stay later. Psychologically, it is a much better feeling to finish something before schedule than having to stay late.

This tip sounds silly, but be sure you capture everything you possibly need at a location or with a specific performer before you leave that location or tell a performer that they are all set. It’s a pain in the butt to realize when editing that you are missing a key piece of dialogue.

Do everything you can to capture good sound while you are at the location, including room tone for the dead space between dialogue. Dubbing in post-production is always an option, but if it is not needed, that is terrific too.

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Post-Production

A lot of people may tell you that this is when the film is really made. If you are not a confident and experienced editor yourself, find someone whose style you like and who you can trust to deliver a product on a timetable. There are pros and cons to editing yourself or having an outside editor. You probably have an idea of how the film should flow if you wrote the script, but you may become so attached to one shot, that you are not willing to sacrifice it for the good of the overall project.

Editing is much more than cutting out the bad parts and squishing the good parts together. Depending on how much camera coverage you had during production, there can be almost limitless choices available when working on each scene. You may even edit the same scene two different ways and have a small test audience tell you which is more effective.

Just like writing the script, editing can be done from big idea to small detail. Get the shots in a logical order for each scene, connect scenes together into a sequence, and finally an overall flow for the entire film. Always use the most capable computer that you have for editing, but even with that, I recommend creating a separate project for each sequence while at this first-cut stage. Even the best computers and graphic processors can get bogged down when trying to store an entire movie in one project if you are just working on a 10 minute chunk.

Many beginners with computer editing see all the different options for transition effects and think they have to use at least one per scene. The big idea with a transition is it should not be noticeable. There are all kinds of wipes, dissolves, swirling waves, etc. but if you are not careful they will scream “THIS IS A TRANSITION”. Direct cuts to new establishing shots are the most common transition in both films and television and can work very well when you know how to use them. 

Do not do anything in terms of sound effects, music, or visual effects, until you have the first draft cut of the edit ready. You do not want to waste a composer’s time (and your money) writing music to line up with a scene that is later cut or trimmed. Just like the script, the edit must be really solid before you move on to the next step. 

I recommend getting your composer on board at the beginning of post production so they know the overall feel of the film, but do not have them start to write specific cues until you have the rest of the sound mix (dialogue, specific effects, foley, and ambience) ready. You may find that music is not needed in a specific sequence if the sound is telling the story on its own. If you do not have a separate sound editor, you may want to ask others to critique your use of sound. You may be so excited that you found just the right sound for a shot only for someone else to admit that no one chewing would ever be that loud. Foley is sound that is recorded to match specific actions. The ambient sounds may be the most important for realism. Nothing reminds the viewer “THIS IS FAKE” until the sound completely cuts out in between lines of dialogue. Environmental sounds and room tone always continue even when they are barely perceptible.

If you have someone else working on the visual effects, they can begin once you are sure that every effect requested is absolutely necessary. Even if you are doing the effects yourself, do not waste your time working on shots that may not be necessary to the plot or able to be rendered believable.

The music may be the last stage of post-production. Be really careful to select someone that understands what kind of sound you desire. A neo-noir detective story may sound really stupid if you hire someone that specializes in bluegrass music. Your medieval epic may not work if you have a jazz pianist recording the soundtrack. Great filmmakers know when to use music and how to use music. There are many great texts and articles on film music and I suggest you pursue them before this stage of the film.


If any of this article sticks with you, please let it be to finish the script before you do anything else. You don’t want to spend 13 years working on the same film like I did :)

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    Michael Arell Blog: Teaching, Music, and Movies


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